Makes daggers

He stooped over the massive hammer the demon jarl had dropped before going into the magma. Kaya was about to protest—a bit heavy for me, not really my style—when Tyvar pushed his fingers into the black iron of the hammerhead as if it were mud. From it, he pulled two fistfuls of metal: one he dropped to the path where it clinked dully against the rock.

The other nugget he held up and squinted at. "Terrible quality. But we can do something about that."

He pressed both hands around it and squeezed, the muscles along his arms and shoulders going taut. When his palms came apart, he was holding a small oval, rough in parts like the pit of a fruit. He knelt over and pushed it into the basalt, which took some doing. Afterwards, he did the same with the other nugget. Kaya watched, mystified, as he scooped broken, charcoal-colored earth into a little mound over each. "What are you doing?"

"Everything has the potential to grow," said Tyvar, straightening back up. "Trees, people—we expect it from them. But earth and stone, too, given time, and patience. Or, failing that, a bit of magic. I told you my abilities work differently in each realm I pass through. I figured in a place as lifeless as this, anything would be desperate to grow. Even metal. And I was right," he said, grinning.

She'd never heard of transmutation like this. "What about back in Gnottvold? What you did to those trolls?"

He waved his hand dismissively. "Easy. Torga trolls are creatures of the earth—they spend years at a time as little more than boulders, gathering moss. They're not far from stone as is. I only coaxed them a bit closer to that shape."

Then, before her eyes, something poked up out of the ground. A sprout—the same dark iron color that the oval had been, but curling, unfurling. Then another, from the other mound. Kaya watched as they grew taller and thicker, as they sprouted tendrils that wove together into braiding latticework. When the top folded over the rest, falling in a D-shaped curve, she realized what she was looking at: a hand-axe. Two, actually. Grown from the ground, like stalks of wheat.

Tyvar reached over and pulled them from the rock—twisting as he did so, as if snapping off a root. Then he handed them to her, handle first. "You like them fast and light. Is that right?"

Warily, she took one. The whole thing was made of the same material—no rust, no blood, no imperfections, just cold gray metal. The head of the axe, with those ornate knotwork patterns grown into it, was a lighter color than the handle. Somehow the grip was rougher, in a way that felt like it wouldn't slip from her hands. She flipped it into the air, everything rotating around a point just below the axe head, and caught it again. Well-balanced, for something that popped out of the ground.